Stable Kimi access in 2026 with Clash:
Moonshot web and API split rules

1 Why give Kimi and Moonshot a dedicated routing block

Routing “AI traffic” as a single blob fails the moment your browser, IDE, and batch jobs disagree about which resolver, which proxy port, and which policy group actually applied. Kimi compounds that because Moonshot operates multiple public surfaces: a consumer site, China-market API endpoints, and international API endpoints that do not share one registrable suffix. If you copy-paste a DeepSeek-only list, api.moonshot.cn never matches; if you assume “everything is kimi.com,” your OpenAI-compatible worker may still call api.moonshot.ai and bypass the story you told your team.

Clash on Mihomo rewards explicit modeling: create a selector such as PROXY_KIMI, attach DOMAIN-SUFFIX rows for each Moonshot-related suffix you truly use, optionally layer a private rule provider, and insert those lines above broad GEOIP or MATCH catch-alls. The outcome is not vanity—it is operational. When someone says “the web UI streams fine but the API job stalls,” you can answer with a log line and a YAML row instead of rebooting everything.

If you are assembling your first profile, start from our download page for maintained installers; cite upstream GitHub for license and issues, not as the only way casual readers should obtain packages.

2 Three surfaces: consumer web, developer platform, and HTTPS API

Consumer web. Many users reach Kimi through kimi.com, which hosts the interactive product, marketing pages, and flows that behave like a modern single-page application. Browser traffic typically respects the operating-system proxy when Clash exposes one, but long-lived connections for streaming completions and auxiliary assets still need consistent DNS and a stable exit. If you only route *.moonshot.cn because you read a China-market blog post, the tab that opened on kimi.com may never enter your PROXY_KIMI group.

Developer platform. API keys, usage dashboards, and documentation commonly live on platform.moonshot.cn for the China stack and platform.moonshot.ai for the international stack—verify the exact host your account email and console URL show, because Moonshot documents both regional endpoints. These hosts are not “the API” in the TCP sense, but they are still part of the end-to-end experience when you rotate keys or debug quota errors in a browser.

HTTPS API. OpenAI-compatible clients typically call https://api.moonshot.cn/v1 or https://api.moonshot.ai/v1 depending on the product line and region. The critical point for Clash is simpler: the TLS SNI remains on the moonshot.cn or moonshot.ai suffix, so suffix-based rules still work once you include both families if your team mixes accounts. Command-line tools and containers often ignore desktop proxy settings unless you enable TUN or export HTTPS_PROXY; always validate with curl -v from the same environment that runs production code.

3 Practical domain inventory: what to suffix-route

The maintainable default is to list a small set of registrable suffixes and expand only when logs prove you need more. For most teams in 2026, the following pattern covers Kimi and Moonshot without chasing every CDN alias on day one:

• DOMAIN-SUFFIX,kimi.com,PROXY_KIMI — consumer web and related subdomains.
• DOMAIN-SUFFIX,moonshot.cn,PROXY_KIMI — China-market sites such as kimi.moonshot.cn, api.moonshot.cn, and platform.moonshot.cn when your workflow uses them.
• DOMAIN-SUFFIX,moonshot.ai,PROXY_KIMI — international API and console hostnames such as api.moonshot.ai and platform.moonshot.ai.

Some organizations also encounter kimi.ai or other branded hosts in marketing links; add a suffix row only after you see repeated connections in logs—do not cargo-cult domains from unofficial mirrors. Likewise, third-party “Kimi clients” or scraped documentation sites are out of scope for Moonshot itself; route them under their own suffixes or block them if policy requires.

When a subscription’s remote rule provider already contains a “Chinese AI” bundle, read it before merging: mixed lists may send training telemetry or unrelated portals through the same node you use for API keys. Prefer behavior: classical providers you can audit, and keep Moonshot-specific rows near the top of rules: so local overrides win during incidents.

4 Rule order: why the first match is the only match

Mihomo evaluates rules: sequentially; the first hit terminates the search. A profile that places GEOIP,CN,DIRECT or an early MATCH line ahead of your Moonshot suffix rows will silently defeat PROXY_KIMI even though you “added Kimi somewhere.” Move explicit DOMAIN-SUFFIX and RULE-SET entries above catch-alls that swallow whole regions or default everything to direct.

Avoid long-lived DOMAIN-KEYWORD,kimi rules except as a temporary packet capture aid. Keyword rules invite collisions with unrelated hosts, internal test fixtures, or marketing pages that happen to embed the substring. Suffix-based routing plus narrowly scoped DOMAIN exceptions—added only after logs justify them—stays readable during audits and postmortems.

5 Illustrative YAML: groups, providers, and rules

The excerpt below is educational. Rename PROXY_KIMI to match your subscription’s conventions, validate with your client’s linter, and never paste example URLs into production without reviewing the upstream.

# Example only — merge with your full profile
proxy-groups:
  - name: PROXY_KIMI
    type: select
    proxies:
      - AUTO-BEST
      - DIRECT

rule-providers:
  moonshot-kimi:
    type: http
    behavior: classical
    url: "https://example.com/rules/moonshot-kimi.txt"
    path: ./ruleset/moonshot-kimi.yaml
    interval: 86400

rules:
  - RULE-SET,moonshot-kimi,PROXY_KIMI
  - DOMAIN-SUFFIX,kimi.com,PROXY_KIMI
  - DOMAIN-SUFFIX,moonshot.cn,PROXY_KIMI
  - DOMAIN-SUFFIX,moonshot.ai,PROXY_KIMI

If you do not yet host a curated provider file, delete the RULE-SET line and rely on the three DOMAIN-SUFFIX rows until your list matures. Pair the block with coherent DNS: our DNS leak prevention guide explains FakeIP, DoH, and resolver alignment that prevents “rule matched but TLS still fails” ghosts.

6 Why blunt GEOSITE imports are a weak solo strategy

Community geosite bundles help bootstrap “send overseas SaaS to PROXY,” but they are coarse, occasionally stale, and painful to explain during outages. You might want Kimi web traffic and API traffic on different exits for latency, billing, or compliance—even though both are “AI.” Vendor-specific RULE-SET files or explicit suffix lines produce Git-friendly diffs; anonymous mega-lists do not.

Recommended pattern: keep your subscription baseline, then incrementally layer Moonshot-focused providers or inline rows immediately after your highest-priority exceptions. That preserves explainability when a teammate asks why a host stayed on DIRECT—the answer cites a line number, not an opaque blob downloaded last Tuesday.

7 TUN, system proxy, and environment variables

System proxy mode helps browsers and polite CLI tools, but runtimes that open raw sockets or ignore HTTP_PROXY may still bypass Clash. Workstations that mix kimi.com tabs with local Python or Node jobs calling api.moonshot.ai often get the most consistent results from TUN mode, where packets enter Mihomo before user-space libraries apply their own policies. Our Clash Verge Rev TUN guide covers loop avoidance and checks that generalize to any HTTPS API.

Without TUN, export HTTPS_PROXY (and HTTP_PROXY where needed) to match your mixed port, align SOCKS if your stack requires it, and audit NO_PROXY so internal registries and localhost are not accidentally hairpinned. Document the working combination for CI runners so scheduled jobs inherit the same egress as developer laptops—nothing burns time like “works locally, fails in GitHub Actions” because only one side exported proxy variables.

8 OpenAI-compatible SDKs and base URL discipline

Most Moonshot API users can stay on mainstream OpenAI client libraries by swapping the base URL and API key. Typical patterns look like OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://api.moonshot.ai/v1 or the China equivalent—exact environment variable names depend on the SDK, so trust the documentation you actually ship, not a random forum snippet. For Clash, the important invariant is that TLS still terminates on the Moonshot suffix you modeled; the HTTP path prefix does not change routing at the proxy layer.

When a library offers “use system proxy,” keep that toggle aligned with Clash’s system proxy export. When it does not, prefer TUN or explicit proxy environment variables. Never chain untrusted public relays in front of API keys—transport hygiene starts at the first hop you control.

For IDE-heavy workflows, Cursor with Clash remains the complementary read; this article stays focused on Moonshot hostnames at the OS and router layer.

9 How this guide sits next to DeepSeek, Qwen, and global vendors

Our DeepSeek split-routing guide targets deepseek.com and its chat/API subdomains—one compact suffix for most users. Moonshot is different: consumer branding on kimi.com sits beside regional API stacks on moonshot.cn and moonshot.ai, so a single suffix is usually insufficient. If you merge both vendors into one “domestic LLM” policy group, that is valid when latency and policy align; if you need separate exits, duplicate the pattern with two selectors and keep YAML comments honest about why.

For Alibaba Qwen-adjacent downloads and model hubs, see Qwen3 with Hugging Face and ModelScope: the hostname graph centers on research hosting and registries, not Moonshot’s API surface, so the rules do not substitute for one another even though both are “Chinese foundation models” in headline summaries.

Global vendors such as OpenAI still deserve their own blocks—our ChatGPT and OpenAI routing article covers that parallel lane. Treat each guide as a module: compose them in rules: in the order your jurisdiction and team policy require, not in the order a blog happened to be published.

10 API keys, quotas, and policy boundaries

Reliable routing does not guarantee service entitlement. HTTP 401, 403, throttling, or account-tier errors after connectivity is fixed belong to Moonshot account settings, key rotation, or organizational policy—not your Clash YAML. Rotate keys that leaked into logs, store secrets in vaults for teams, and scope automation accounts to the minimum models and endpoints they need.

This guide addresses client-side reachability only; it is not legal advice about regulated jurisdictions, export controls, or corporate acceptable-use policies. Use Kimi and Moonshot services according to their terms and your local regulations.

11 DNS, logs, and troubleshooting patterns

Split-brain DNS—Mihomo resolving to FakeIP while the OS stub still queries the ISP—remains a leading cause of mysterious TLS failures. Align resolvers deliberately, flush stale caches after profile edits, and when testing, change one variable at a time: node choice, DNS mode, then application timeouts. Streaming chat completions over HTTP/2 on lossy routes may stall even when small health checks succeed; try another exit or tune client read timeouts after routing is proven clean.

IPv6 surprises persist: if the OS prefers IPv6 first but your policy assumes IPv4-only proxy paths, some sessions bypass Clash intermittently. Route IPv6 consistently or temporarily disable it while isolating the issue, then return with a proper fix rather than leaving the toggle off forever.

Patterns that persist after rules look correct. Endless TLS handshakes often mean DNS and FakeIP disagree; connection resets right after Client Hello may indicate SNI-based shaping elsewhere. For API clients, check for stale /etc/hosts entries from old experiments. For browsers, disable conflicting VPN extensions that fight Clash for the same traffic.

12 FAQ

• The web app works but API scripts time out: The runtime likely bypasses system proxy—enable TUN or export HTTPS_PROXY; verify with curl -v against the exact API host your SDK uses.
• I only routed moonshot.cn; kimi.com still fails: Add DOMAIN-SUFFIX,kimi.com or confirm your users never hit that host; check logs for the real SNI.
• Does this conflict with DeepSeek or ChatGPT rules? No, if order is explicit—each vendor uses different suffixes; use separate policy groups when exits must differ.
• Can I route only the API and send browsing direct? Technically yes with narrow DOMAIN rules, but it is fragile; most teams route the full suffix set unless compliance forbids it.
• OpenAI SDK with Moonshot base URL still fails: Confirm the library reads proxy environment variables, and that the base URL includes the correct API version path per Moonshot docs—routing may be fine while the client points at the wrong path.

13 Wrap-up

Stable Kimi access with Clash in 2026 is mostly careful hostname modeling: cover kimi.com for the consumer product, moonshot.cn for the China-market console and API stack, and moonshot.ai for the international API and platform stack your keys actually use. Wrap those suffixes in a dedicated selector, optionally back them with a private rule provider, and place the rows before blunt catch-alls so logs stay honest when browsers and automation disagree about proxies.

Compared with one-size-fits-all GEOSITE imports, explicit Moonshot rules stay diffable in Git and interoperate cleanly with the rest of your “domestic model” library—DeepSeek for deepseek.com, Qwen3 for model hubs, and global-vendor guides for OpenAI-class traffic. Among desktop clients, Clash’s readable rule sheets and mature Mihomo features fit engineers who split time between chat tabs, SDKs, and CI runners on one machine.

When routing stops stealing attention, you can focus on prompts, evaluations, and shipping features—which is what a solid proxy stack should enable for Kimi users this year.

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